The Australian Academy of the Humanities

Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment

The 18th Round Table of the National Scholarly Communications Forum, Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment was held on June 1 2004, at the National Archives of Australia. The National Scholarly Communications Forum invited leading researchers, policymakers, library, university and government administrators, and IT practitioners. The event was built upon the DEST-commissioned report by Professor John Houghton with Colin Steele and Margaret Henty. The aim of the conference was to encourage a coordinated and holistic approach to research knowledge creation and distribution and examine issues such as incentive systems for rewarding research output and information rights.

The Internet revolution and various digital open access initiatives have provided the opportunity for many researchers around the world to reexamine scholarly communication practices. An example of this debate is the Berlin Declaration (October 2003), signed by all of Germany's principal scientific and scholarly institutions, which argues that the Internet has fundamentally changed the economic realities of scholarly knowledge and cultural heritage distribution with the availability of worldwide access.

The changing information and communication environment means there is now:

increasing diversity in relation to the location of research activities;
a greater mix of public and commercial stakeholders and interests;
an increasing focus on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research;
an increasing focus on problems rather than techniques;
greater emphasis on collaborative work and communication; and
a greater emphasis on informal modes of communication (eg. personal and professional networks).

However, while the modes of research collaboration and creation have altered dramatically, the formal accountabilities for research, including publication frameworks and research measures, have remained unchanged.

The 'Changing Research Practices...' Round Table will provide a framework to:

establish a mechanism for the identification of research information infrastructure priorities that is representative of all stakeholders and able to gain support for identified initiatives;
stimulate informed debate about research infrastructure and scholarly communication issues, collaborating internationally where appropriate;
stimulate innovation through reforms to incentive systems – including, inter alia, research evaluation, intellectual property rights, grant allocation and peer review mechanisms;
encourage institutional leadership, with particular emphasis on advocacy programs, to facilitate access to, and management of digital repositories; and
support ongoing research into evolving research practices, research infrastructure and scholarly communication needs.

Remarks on the Panel Discussion by Prof. Elspeth McLachlan, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research, University of New South Wales

As a basic neurobiologist doing research, I have been acutely conscious of the enormous advances in time saving that have eventuated from the delivery of journals to my desktop - particularly with more and more back issues becoming available. The speed at which these changes have occurred is amazing. However, my type of basic discovery research is a very long way from being able to utilize fast systems for data processing. Data sets are not really relevant when the experimental approach to obtain the data takes much more time than the analysis. Many of the researchers that I talk to are perfectly happy with their PCs and only wish that we didn't have to waste so much time learning how to use new systems only to have them change again in a couple of years' time. Improvements to our work with updates are not obvious. However the ability to observe images directly down someone else's microscope in real time is a wonderful development and I look forward to having the opportunity to avail myself of this. It would require having a very rich collaborator and a lot of time to set it up.

From the speakers today, I was very pleased to hear that the Impact Factors of journals are not as important as the citation count for an individual's papers as a measure of research excellence. This has always been my experience in the peer review process for, e.g., the Fellowships scheme of the NHMRC or promotions to Professor. Invitations to speak internationally at prestigious conferences are another major metric for research excellence. Having spent half my career as an NHMRC Fellow on 5 year contracts, the RAE seems to me an excellent way to ensure the best research is supported in Universities. The only concern is not to ignore the solitary or small group researchers who can achieve a great deal without the need for extensive collaboration. It's horses for courses.

This raises an issue about collaboration between researchers within Australia. Researchers in small fields of study have to be careful not to collaborate themselves out of the peer review circuit for national grants. If all the best in the field are collaborators, the grants will inevitably be reviewed by weaker researchers who may not appreciate the significance of a novel approach.

In relation to open access publishing, in a narrow biomedical area like mine, it is unlikely that people who wish to access my publications can't do so as they are all associated with research or health delivery organisations with electronic access. I would be very concerned about peer review if reviewers' names were released. Some journals I have been associated with publish a list of everyone who has reviewed manuscripts for them at the end of each year - nominally to thank them - but this also allows the authors to see the quality of the reviewing team. This is probably a better way to reveal who is engaged in the review process than to become embroiled in litigious debate.

Relevant Links
Below are some relevant links to the issues which were examined at 'Changing Research Practices...':

Round Table Information
The programme is available for download in Portable Document (.PDF, 62KB) format. The press release is available in Portable Document (.PDF, 44KB) format as are the outcomes (.PDF, 77KB).

Papers
These papers are all in Microsoft Powerpoint format (.PPT), except the CRPDICE report, which is held by the Australian National University's e-Prints Repository.

Sir Gareth Roberts, Research Frameworks for Excellence - Global Perspectives (63KB)
Prof. John Houghton, Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communiction Environment - Summary (109KB)
Prof. Charles Oppenheim, Research Excellence and Academic Publications: the Parameters for Change (208KB)
Dr Evan Arthur, Government Policy Frameworks (161KB)
Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment by John Houghton, Margaret Henty and Colin Steele.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities

NSCF Round Table 18

Previous NSCF Roundtable Websites

Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment

Remarks on the Panel Discussion by Prof. Elspeth McLachlan, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research, University of New South Wales